It is easier sometimes to get angry first, when he does something I wasn’t expecting and it interferes with my plans, for example. And just as I’m about to get angry, he looks at me, holds me close, and whispers, “I’m sorry.” Instantly, I know that he means it, and I’m no longer angry. In fact, I’m surprised at how fast my anger flares up, asking myself why I wasn’t inclined to forgive right away, why I was defensive first.

I’ve never seen him get really angry at me, and he won’t hang up the phone without knowing that things are fine again and that the conversation ended on a positive note. He speaks to me gently, soothingly, patiently, quietly. He’s never raised his voice at me, and when he has misspoken in the past, he’s thought about his words and set things right again.

What a gift he is. I see him as something so precious to me that I don’t want to change a single thing about him, not a hair on his head, not the way he wipes his nose with his sleeve, not the socks he has with holes in them, not his sharp toe nails, not even his snore when he’s congested.

I am thankful every day that this wonderful human being has come into my life and that I was trusting enough to open the door for him.

On Saturday, as I rode by on a bus, I saw a man on the sidewalk, bleeding from the head. He had a seizure and as my bus drove by, I saw him lying on his side, blood pooling in a very real way.

A week ago, my roommates and I were in the Mission and we a saw a buck naked man wandering in the middle of the street. He was on something, and he was obviously confused. Some people pulled him onto the sidewalk, and wrapped his nether regions in a sweatshirt. One of my roommates called the police.

In both cases, the cops got there in a matter of minutes, thankfully. But one more second could’ve meant the difference between life and death.

1. I’m pretty naïve. Mostly by choice.
2. Men jerk off because it feels good. It has nothing to do with the woman they love. They do it not because they’re unhappy in the relationship, but because they are happy.
3. When a guy is depressed, he isn’t as interested in sex. So masturbating isn’t as interesting either.
4. When a guy is depressed, he’ll still masturbate. Who am I kidding.
5. Pornography is prevalent in male society. It’s easily accessible, it’s free, and it’s consequence free. (Except that your computer suddenly starts to run really slowly and the nether-regions get a bit dry if proper lubrication isn’t used. Oh, and getting off to porn is really easy, so when a real woman is involved, you’ll be more likely to get lazy about pleasing her. Maybe I’m wrong? And it hurts the girlfriend’s feelings if you’re enjoying yourself without her there because it makes her feel insecure and ask things like, “Are these big enough?”And she’ll start doing things like buying new clothes, getting her hair done, etc. to get the guy’s attention so he thinks she’s actually different women, and thus a variety of vaginas.)
6. I think on some level porn is about objectifying a woman, any woman, I don’t even care what her face looks like, just put a bag over her head and take pictures of her genitalia, that’s all I really need to get off. No legs? Even better. Less to get in the way.
7. There are some women that qualify for being objectified, and some women that don’t really, but what the hell, she has a vagina, so that’s good enough, I guess I’ll do her just this once.
8. Ok, #7 wasn’t fair. Men don’t actually think when they jack off. They just do it. Sort of like taking a piss, or scratching their butts.
9. There are some women that are too pure to jack off to, so men compartmentalize their more creative desires for certain types of women. (I believe that's a dance on the fine line of objectifying a woman and thinking violently of her. Thinking of some women that way means that some women deserve certain things, and simply don't feel things the same way as other women. Like pain, perhaps. i.e. "She wanted it. She asked for it.")
10. After men indulge in porn, they thank their lucky stars that they have a good girl to sleep with each night, to keep them company, and to share life’s lonely moments. He just doesn’t realize that his indulgence made her love him a little bit less. He chose someone else over her in that compartmentalizing way (it’s got nothing to do with you sweety, wack wack wack, I just wanted this [i.e. not you right now])—that’s insulting. What else is she supposed to feel?

***

People get mean when it’s raining. A few days ago I heard a woman fall down some concrete steps and I didn’t actually see her fall. I just heard the noise. A heavy body makes a lot of noise. She was heavy, and I have to say it was the worst sound I’ve heard since my best friend ran over a dog backing out of a driveway. It was really terrible. Very soon after this lady’s body hit the steps in a thud-thud-plunk way, a large crowd gathered at the top of the stairs, and I came along at just the right time as I rounded the corner to be one of the first on-lookers. Meanwhile, the traffic jam of wet, tired people started snorting for me to get out of the way. The fallen calf—poor thing—lost her shoes, dropped her box of things (the kind of box you carry when you get fired), and sat embarrassed and drenched on the floor.

It’s been the first sunny day in San Francisco in weeks. I forgot how much I hate rain. The first week, I made it through with tennis shoes, figuring it would stop raining soon so why invest in a good umbrella, a rain jacket, boots? By week two, I gave up anyway. Even with waterproof shoes, you still end up getting soaked from head to toe. Schubert and I went to a Russian Festival today on Sutter St. We had some classic food—borscht (hearty tomato/beef soup), pilmeni (meat-filled dumplings), galubtzi (stuffed cabage) and some Napoleon cake (with cherries and cream). We listened to an a cappella quartet sing classic Russian songs (most of which I hadn’t heard before).

1. It's been one year since I met Schubert. And it's been a better year than I could have hoped for.
   
2. I have found a permanent apartment in San Francisco with 3 great roommates (so far, that is). My things will be here in a few days from D.C. I can't wait to put stuff away, have books on my bookshelf, have a kitchen full of cookware and have my closet organized. Oh, and a fluffy, clean, comfy bed will be nice too.
3. I'm learning a lot at work.
4. Can anyone else corroborate that making friends in San Francisco is a lot easier than in D.C.?
5. When you make a wish before you blow out your birthday candles, how long do you remember that wish? Does anyone ever write it down, and then check a few months/years later to see if it came true?
6. Is it really true that if you tell someone your wish then it won't come true?
7. What brings me joy is doing something nice for someone I love. I like that about myself--that I can do nice things and really not expect the same things back. Maybe a good hug is all I ask for.
8. I'm going to a Russian Festival in San Francisco tomorrow. Should be interesting.
   
9. I love flowers!
10. And soft things.
    

I think I’m at war with writing. I read something good and I say, “I could have written that.” And then I finish the line with “Well, why haven’t you?” I blame others for various feelings ranging from a diluted sense of purpose to a watercolor job to a bland pursuit of the frivolous to a runny sense of time and the amount of it that I have left. I also do a fair amount of comparing: “So and so is getting married and I want to talk about babies too.” So Schubert says, “Why are you comparing yourself to others?” And I say, “Because I want those things too. It doesn’t matter that others have them and I’ve become a cliché of a vague twenty-something. I’m still a person and I want those things too.” I just do.

I don’t write when I’m doing things I’m not proud of. If I write, it better be honest, so I don’t want to talk about things that hurt.

We’ve been having lots of talks, generally unpleasant ones. Issues of insecurity have been clouding our time together, but at least I’m being honest with him and at least he’s perceptive enough to understand me, which really is very hard to do.

A family friend sent me an article about a short story writing contest with the topic of “Are We There Yet?” The contestant can take that in any way they choose to, and they have to write four pages. I told Schubert about the contest and asked him, “What do you think I’ll write about?” Without hesitating, he said, “Marriage. If you and I are ready for it yet.” Note the lack of question mark at the end. I thought he’d never guess, because if even if he did guess, he’d never actually say it. It’s a topic that’s like swarming ants under a carpet. No, not under a rug, a carpet. The thought gives you a sick, churning feeling that sort of creeps you out and sort of makes you want to leave the room or run away and hide. And then blame someone. Who put that carpet on an ant hill? And who brought those ants into the house in the first place? See, now you’re changing the subject. Always changing the subject. Admit it, you just don’t want to talk about marriage.

I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that children of alcoholics might feel like vomiting if they smell liquor. I don’t know. Sometimes, I feel like vomiting when I have to say the word marriage. And I suppress nervous laughter when someone says the pretentious word “fiancé.”

Wife? That’s one word that feels as sturdy as a chimney. It’s a proud word that I could lean on, cling to it like my mother’s skirt. It’s the one word that means there’s hope for me. It has more to do with the woman than her counterpart—without whom she wouldn’t be a wife at all. But still, I feel like she could go on being a wife even when he no longer was her husband. If he dies, she becomes a widow, but I’d just go on thinking of her as a wife, because that comes from within. That’s what gives the marriage solidity and sturdiness, warmth and compassion.

I wiped the smile off my face when he guessed what my short story would be about, and I knew at that moment that I’d never send it in, and I might not even write it. He guessed, and he went on looking at the menu.

If he had said, “You’ll write about politics, the 2008 campaign.” I could’ve pretended that that was it, and said, “You got it!” I then I could’ve kept my secret to myself, the one thing I always think about and the thing that scares me the most. How it makes me completely disoriented, wondering, what now? I think about it so much and I know so little about it. I think I want it and it terrifies me. Mass made lifestyles don’t ever fit me. I try them on and I conclude, “This just isn’t for me.” Wedding planning books make me dizzy and white dresses make me want to spill something on them.

He ordered an omelet, and I ordered a salad. It’s a diner we’d never gone to and we sat across from each other in a booth. I switched seats to sit by him, and that’s when I brought up the writing contest.

The deadline came and went, and I didn’t submit anything. He never asked me about it. I don’t blame him. I blame myself.

I think I want to be married, so I can have a yellow house with white trim and hardwood floors. A big parlor with a cherry wood piano for him. These things mean companionship to me because there’s a default person somewhere in the house. This abstract home calms me, but the real thought of a key being pulled out of my purse, inserting it in the lock, opening the door, and being disappointed by the person I see… that makes me feel hopeless. And so vulnerable. What if ten years go by and then I feel that way?

“I didn’t know how good things could be,” he said, as we sat on my couch after spending an afternoon at Golden Gate Park. We’d had another big discussion, during which I admitted amidst embarrassing tears, “But I don’t want to get married that late.” And he said things like, “There’s so much time left,” and I thought of how long my grandma lived and how long she was sick for. But both of his grandmas are still alive and well, and he’s such a warm soul. He just doesn’t know the way I know things.

He’s an animal, just like me, but we’re driven by different biology. We’re different and equal, and sometimes he’s just flat out better than me, like when he says just the right thing at the right time, and knows exactly how to touch me. But I’m too proud to say, “Thank you. That was exactly what I needed.”

“If we lived together, this is how big I’d want the apartment to be,” he said. Instantly, I was standing in the redecorated room, the empty shelf suddenly had his music books on them, and I felt like we were exactly where we were supposed to be. And I didn’t say thank you for that momentary feeling of calm, like I was the last piece of a puzzle and someone picked me off of the floor and put me in my place, all snug, and full of purpose.

I’m not anywhere near her nursing home, and I’m not anywhere near my mom. And my grandma isn’t around anymore, not even at the nursing home, but I swore for a split second as I tasted the gritty blueberry seedlings, feeling them between my teeth, that she was still in that permanent and helpless state. How I got used to that. The decline and perpetual drowning. Completely submerged at the bottom of the pool, the weight just won’t let up to at least free the body to float to the surface. How permanent a slow decline can be, how indefinitely hopeless, permanently not alive and not dead.

I hate that when I think of her I don’t remember the good times. I just remember in flinching seconds that she was never going to get better, that she was so heavy on my mother’s ankles as they sank together. Robbery. Senility robs what I have a right to, a grandmother or at least the memory of one. Her illness stole my memories.

I remembered her tonight as the tangy juice slid down my throat, how I watched my mother’s anger flare up at her because she’d spit back the food, let it drip from her chin down her shirt onto her hands. She’d swat at my mother’s hand as she tried to dry the kasha from her face, swat, slap slap slap. How angry my mother got.

Anger. It sounds like a foreign country, or maybe Angieres. Seething Salem. Panicking Palermo. Defeated Djibouti. Ignore me, I’m just playing with my mom’s emotions or how she must have felt at times. I spent one evening with my grandma, trying to coax her to eat something and I started to feel the weeeeiiiiiiigggggggggggghhhhhht of her age and illness and she looked like Smeagol and I loved her and was angry at her at the same time.

How shame takes hold of us and bares us for all to see. I am ashamed that I just said that my grandma looked like Smeagol, but when the movie first came out, I couldn’t stop thinking of the similarity. How comforting to see that she was well, crawling around on all fours calling something precious, having a desire for something [delectably disturbing].

Goddamned anger. How do you communicate with someone who’s gone? She was gone twelve years before she really left, and when she passed I was relieved. There’s no sense to that. She’d sometimes say in Russian, “I don’t want to live.” Ten days before she died we took her downstairs to the room with parakeets in it, wrapped her in her blue blanket, and placed her by the couch. My brother read, I did too. I don’t know what mom did, but it was grandma’s last birthday.

When she was laid out on her bed, she was straight for the first time in years. I always saw her scrunched up, hunched over even when she was lying down. Bony elbows and shoulders jutting out at neomodern angles (architects would be proud).

I didn’t want to talk about this.

My blueberry-pomegranate juice evoked a memory, and I just wanted to make her well again, the same way my mom tried to feed her blintzes by mushing them up first. Or when mom packed fresh blackberries and grandma ate them one after the other grinding the seeds between her yellow teeth. I worried she’d get diarrhea and mom was glad she was eating something.

“Forgiveness is not quantifiable, and it is not contingent upon the repentance or remorse of the offender. Sometimes those who hurt us later realize what they have done and express regret, but often they do not. Our forgiveness of others cannot await this uncertain outcome and actually has nothing to do with it. If we wait for others to be sorry that they have injured us, we may wait forever. The forgiving spirit is a quality within the forgiver, and is not dependent on the moral caliber of the offender. Our spiritual growth must proceed regardless of what others do. The three “Cs” of recovery programs remind us that we did not cause others to be like they are; we cannot control them; and we won’t be able to cure them.”

What or whom have you had to forgive? Please share stories with me in the comments.

This is what Schubert and Laura look like:

I’m spending my time doing domestic things. When I’m happy, I start cleaning and cooking, laundering and grocery shopping. Since I arrived, I’ve scrubbed the boys’ bathtub, made the house’s fridge sparkling clean, done about 10 loads of laundry, folded laundry that didn’t belong to me (have received about a dozen thank yous from people), cooked a few meals, made some great dessert to share, swept floors, scrubbed countertops, and organized my boyfriend’s closet (mainly to make room for my things in it).

He’s been a sweetheart about all of this stuff. Instead of saying, “Stop meddling and leave my stuff alone!” he’s said thank you to me for every little thing I’ve done, including getting rid of the squeaky hinges on his bedroom door (the trick: take a Q-tip and dip it in olive oil, dab on to the hinges for a quick fix). I’ve replaced a burnt-out light bulb and bought him an adorable Wonder Bread sandwich box—he said thank you and thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we’ve found a lovely balance here.

All women really want is acknowledgement. When she does something nice, like remove the goo off the soap dish, all she wants is a quick, “Hey! That goo is gone. Thanks!” Not saying anything is not a good idea, but it’s certainly better than saying something like, “What did you do that for? What a waste of time!” The last response will explain why you don’t get laid that night.

I folded Schubert’s still warm, freshly laundered bath towel and I brought it up to his face while he was working busily on his composition. “Isn’t this nice?” I asked. He smiled and said, “It’s all in the details.” And that is how, ladies and gentlemen, he made me feel appreciated.

***

I’m not working right now, so I’m trying not to spend money where I don’t have to. My job starts on October 29^th, and I considered calling them up and saying, “I’d like to start earlier, please.” But then someone said to me, “Are you nuts?” And I had to seriously consider that possibility—Who in their right mind would give up two weeks of vacation time, especially having just arrived in a new city, where beautiful coffee shops and used book stores cry out for attention? I planned on spending this time looking for apartments, but certain technical difficulties have kept Laura and me from signing a lease. We’ll regroup in a few weeks and go from there. In the meantime, I take meandering walks around the neighborhoods and window shop. I sleep in late, cook meals at home, visit with Schubert during his breaks, and read a ton. There are no TVs in the house, so I watch movies on Netflix and read books instead.

Currently, I’m working through Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt and A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Very different books—the first is a memoir about an Irish family and their survival from the perspective of a little boy, the second is a memoir written by a man from Sierra Leone about his childhood surviving as a child soldier. I'm reading the first one because it won the Pulitzer Prize and the second one for a book club that's meeting soon.

***

Things are great right now. How are you all?

A skit? Oh, right. He does work for a big insurance company; corporate America at its best. His office will have five teams of about 10 people putting on a creative commercial in front of about 100 people at their biannual meeting. I don’t know if any prizes are involved, but I do know that a great deal of preparation is being made by my father and his neighbor, both Russian men, programmers in their late fifties, both with tremendous Russian accents. There are two other Russian programmers in his group of 10, and I’m willing to bet that they all had similar, pained expressions on their faces as they sat down to eat dinner that night.

Cultural discoveries have been made before my very eyes over the last week. “No,” I said to dad, “It’s not Mr. Hovel, it’s Mr. Howell. Pronounce the owell like the word owl, not like the word shovel.” Dad tried it a few times and finally got it. Sort of. “Dad,” I told him, “It’s Gilligan’s Island, not Gilligan Island. It’s a possessive apostrophe s.” Then, he sat on the floor in front of the new big screen TV watching an old episode of the show, singing along with the theme song, practicing it several times before he got the hang of it. Mom told him, “Just don’t sing loud and you’ll be fine.” Dad laughed at the show as Maryanne tried to seduce a native who resisted her by mumbling in an “ethnic” language: “You’re not the type of girl I can bring home to mother.”

Yesterday, as on most evenings, I carpooled home with my dad’s lifelong Russian friends turned neighbors turned coworkers. I listened as the woman corrected her husband’s pronunciation. “No, it’s not strugety it’s strutegy.” This went on for a few minutes, and I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. I threw myself into the fray and said, “it’s just like the beginning of the word stratosphere. Make that ‘a’ nasal sounding, and don’t mix up the ‘g’ and ‘t’. They had me say the word stratosphere five times, followed by the word strategy as it was intended to sound, with the g and t in the right places.

Four out of ten of the troubadouric thespians are Russian, I thought. Did the American who wrote the skit know that my dad has trouble with the word whirl? Did he even realize that my dad would be preparing for his five lines with the kind of fervor that he had when he was studying to be a physicist, the kind of diligence he tried to instill in me when it came to my own algebra and history classes?

My dad’s friend sat in the backseat and said to his daughter on his cell phone, “Listen to me and tell me if you can understand me…” and he recited his few lines, enunciating each syllable, massaging the sides of his tongue against his teeth as he emphasized the American, flat r, chiseling away the rrrolling exotic Russian r to the topography of Wyoming.

As we neared the end of our 50 minute car ride, dad surprised me by reciting his lines perfectly by memory. Each word rounded out like an apple pie’s edges, each intonation of a phrase ebbed and flowed like an American flag, and I could see the smile on his face when he finished and saw me staring at him. Almost a week later, he had finally conquered his demon, and I was reminded again of how each victory over the English language is really a victory for my entire family. These battles are being fought and won, but the word immigrant will never be fully conquered.

~Francesca Johnson in The Bridges of Madison County  

It’s sort of trite, but maybe it could make good material for some short stories.

List of Advice:

1. Unless you’re okay with endless dating, don’t live with the boy. Get your own place.
2. Don’t devote your time to his every need. Examples: Don’t sacrifice happy hours with your coworkers to go to his work events.
3. Don’t get involved in his family drama. As a follow-up, pay close attention to the relationships within his family. If they don’t sit well with you, take that as a predictor of your future together.
4. Reserve chunks of your life for yourself, like drawing a line in the sand which he can’t cross over. The hard part? Really meaning it. If you pick up painting, don’t paint and think, “I wish I was with him on the couch in front of the T.V.”
5. Don’t share finances, for the love of God. And don’t give out social security numbers.
6. When you feel you’re not being respected, believe that feeling.
7. Love is not hard. You shouldn’t have to force yourself to feel good, and you shouldn’t have to force yourself to like someone you should like naturally.
8. Sex is a huge indicator of how your relationship is fairing. If he’s lazy in bed, he’s lazy out of the bedroom. If he puts your pleasure second, he’ll put you second in other areas of your life together.
9. If you feel lonely while sitting with him with no distractions, something’s not right.
10. Don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched—planning is great, don’t get me wrong, but planning the paint color on the walls of the house you haven’t bought together is bad news.
11. Keep your families apart until you’re engaged. There’s no reason for parents to become friends if you don’t even know how the relationship will turn out.
12. Don’t let your boyfriend’s mom treat you like a daughter. You don’t need another mom—you’ve got one already, like her or not.
13. Don’t let your boyfriend’s mom treat you like a daughter-in-law, since you’re not married to her son yet. Examples: shopping with her, and allowing her to question your style in clothing.
14. Make friends, the real kind. Call them, make plans, and follow through. Genuinely care. If you can’t genuinely care, take some time to figure out what’s wrong. Maybe all of your attention is being focused on one person?
15. Plan your life as if you were going to have to do it all alone. While this isn’t the best case scenario, it’s a contingency plan. Anything above that is gravy. As I’ve heard in a movie: “We come into this world alone and we die alone.”
16. Ladies, take your careers seriously. Divorce rate aside, desire to bare children aside, your job does matter. It affects your self esteem and from what I know of men, they love a strong woman. If the guy doesn’t appreciate that in you, re-evaluate why that may be. Does he feel threatened by you? Does he trust you without feeling like he has to bribe you to stay? Does he insist on earning more than you? Is he more competitive with you than encouraging regarding salaries?
17. Negotiate the job offers you get. A disproportionate number of men negotiate compared with women. Don’t be afraid of seeming like a bitch—this is your time you’re being compensated for. It’s your future, and if you’re planning like you’ll be doing it alone, salary starts to matter more.
18. No body owes you anything. If you were privileged growing up, don’t think that’s how things are supposed to be. If you want something, go out there and get it. Don’t expect people to hand you anything.
19. Stop leaching off your parents. It’s one thing if you need a place to stay when something goes wrong, or if you’re between leases, but don’t depend on them to bail you out. Remember: live life like you’re doing it alone. It builds strong legs to stand on.
20. If your goal is to get married, raise a family, and move forward in developing your relationship with your significant other, share that from the outset of a relationship. Once it’s out there, stick to your guns and be ready to leave if your instinct tells you it’s not going to happen. This is why #15 is important. You’ll be more likely to survive a break up if you feel you can take care of yourself no matter what.

I’ll call it my teenage depression because it lasted from 6^th grade through 11^th. It was always there, a lump of old bread in my stomach. Maybe it was a learned behavior from my mom, or maybe it was partly hormones, maybe both. I want to dig through boxes to find my old journals from those times. I’m sure there are some great quotes about wanting to die, morbid things I wrote, and really felt. But everything is already packed up and I don’t want to step barefoot on the garage floor.

I was depressed for six school years, most days surviving, some days clawing at anything that could help me out of the hole I was in, and very few people knew. I made it through alive because I never had the resolve to off myself, even though one of my classmates did, and her grave is next to my grandmother’s grave in Minnesota at a Jewish cemetery. This girl was also Russian, so I guess we had a lot in common. Except she still has an image of Winnie-the-Pooh on her grave stone, the one that’s carved in the shape of a music note, and I’m still alive.

I made it through the day by sleeping three hours after school and six more at night, playing flute in the band, and messing around with boys when I could. The more boys, the better. The more I could pull them along, the healthier I felt. Self esteem problems? Never. Seriously. I wasn’t plagued by such things at that age. I was sick with the disease that made me act like a self-destructive adult at fourteen.

I was also plagued by my mother’s frowning looks and her own depression. The way she and I squared off in the kitchen, one moment hating each other, then standing side by side, cooking at midnight.

My brother’s friend, Marc, would stop by our house some nights when it was very late, and he’d quietly knock on the window of the kitchen, jolting my mother and me out of our walking insomnia and shared depressed eyelids, sticky from sweat, cooking oil, and sadness. He’d sit with us at the table and eat dinner at two in the morning some nights.

I dated a guy for years who was controlling and very jealous. Marc came by one night, and I had to tell him that he wasn’t welcome to visit me anymore, that the guy I was with didn’t allow it. He’d get mad at me, and I’d have to deal with his anger. Marc’s reply: “The Marina I know wouldn’t let a guy do this to her.”

He was right, but I didn’t listen until much later. I’d make crepes with my mom and fill them with sweet apples and cinnamon. I’d rake leaves in the back yard during my weekends home from college, and I’d quietly hide the controlling boyfriend’s effect on me—the side effect that comes from knowing you can fall in love with abuse—the feeling that you could get through anything, if you were just strong enough, if you weren’t so weak.

Raking leaves into little piles, filling a first aid glove with dead leaves, I’d make turkey heads and run around my parents’ yard. Those Indian summer afternoons. One such day brought me the news of my cousin’s suicide, and my dad’s way of delivering the information: “Irit is no longer.” Of course, it sounds different in Russian, but the gist is the same, and my mother snapped at him, “Tell her the truth! She is old enough to know. She’s in college for god’s sake.” So dad says, “She killed herself. With a gun.” And then mom told me to put down the damn turkey head, and what was wrong with me, couldn’t I feel grief like a normal person? Why was I so juvenile? But I couldn’t at the time. I was busy grieving for me. “People deal with grief differently, mom,” was all I could say. And I hated her for a while for not approving of the way I felt sad.

When I finally awoke from my rotting state, I eventually stopped cursing the world around me. I don’t remember when my desire to live resurfaced, but I knew one day, as I sat strapped into a plane seat that I didn’t want to die. So I started making all kinds of deals with god, “Please let me make it through this landing. I promise I’ll be better towards my parents. I won’t be so selfish anymore. I just want to land safely.”

I made it through without medication, or counseling. My general physician once did an exam and said to me, “I’m not sure why you’re so sleepy. Your iron levels are normal, so it’s no anemia. All other tests are coming out fine. Unless…” She trailed off, and then continued, “Unless you’re depressed and you aren’t telling me. Of course, there’s no way that I’d know if you’re good at hiding it.” I sat silent, mortified, wanting to curse the day I’d referred my mother to my doctor. This woman was treating my mother for heavy depression, so no doubt she knew my family history. I guess she could see that I wasn’t fully well, but there wasn’t much she could do for me unless I requested treatment, and I swear, the room was so uncomfortable because the word “depression” had farted its way into our faces. So I went untreated, and I survived.

That survival is a story for another day, but I saw how I’d become—I had finally started caring about my life, and I desperately clung to every missed opportunity, every chance I’d given up for happiness. I began to regret the self destructive things I’d done to myself, like being friends with a girl named Kari in high school who said I embarrassed her when we hung out with guys, how my shirt wasn’t low-cut enough, how I had to stop being so weird. I regretted that I never tried out for a play, or sang in the choir, or took writing seriously. How I doubted myself every time I’d raised my hand, how I didn’t kiss the popular boy I had a crush on and got to go home with after school to work on a home movie English project. I regretted wasting time. I cared, all of a sudden, and that change surprised me to my core, because the very mournful friend I had known for so long had somehow died, and I wasn’t grieving for her.

Home.

What the fuck?

Why is it so hard to just find a place, slap a few things on the walls, get some friends to help lug your freaking oversized couch up the narrow stairwell, and really feel at home? Well, first off, I haven’t found too many friends in DC that would help lug a couch up some stairs. Second, I couldn’t afford an oversized couch when I first got here, and I now know better than to make that kind of an investment in this city. Third, home is about something intangible.

Like how happy I get when I sniff a heavily boy smell saturated t-shirt, my boy’s smell. Or when he puts me in a femi headlock and shoves my nose into his armpit, further emphasizing his masculine prowess as he whispers to me, “This is where your home is.”

And all of my insides melt like salami on a frying pan. My stomach flips, my throat prepares to say something, but all that I can do is laugh hysterically and hold him tightly and breathe in his armpit smell.

Bread, butter, tea, Russian salami.

Cool, San Francisco morning air.

Silent kitchen, two people at the table,

The whole day ahead to lazy it up.